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Local nerds yaps about Siren and the PS2
The planets aligned for that console I tell you, the industry was just big enough to have decent budgets (800k to 9 milion) while also not being so big everything had to be sanitized and lamed down to not scare the normies and you can never take risks. There will probably be nothing else like it even as game making becomes cheaper and easier.
This moment in history allowed for weirdo creators to do near whatever they wanted and so after co-creating Silent Hill, Keiichiro Toyama directed one of the most unque games I've ever played
Have you ever heard of a survival horror game thats inspired by a classic arcade game and a pc submarine simulator? I didnt think so
Several people happened to visit a certain village when a supernatural event occurs and now you play as them trying to escape and find out what is going on; each level is visited multiple times by all the different characters at different times and days, and to proceed you must do a specific thing as a specific character (like breaking something or examining an item) or you will get stuck in an eternal time loop.
The game is deliberately made to be impossible to finish on your own, hundreds of players have to work together and collectively bang their heads against it until it cracks as there is no indication of what in the world you're supposed to do or even what the story is aside from vague hints and brief demos (as in the jap term for cutscenes which I think sounds cooler). Most people will get stuck after a couple hours and on top of that it's crushingly difficult and opressive on top of being terrifying, I mean listen to THIS!
Even the story is cryptic as its told out of order across different perspectives and needs you find various items to get thier files which you use to piece together what led to this and what even are the beings hunting you down.
One of its biggest inspirations was the early namco arcade game Tower of Druaga, it's one of those games thats VERY big in Japan and nowhere else, and you may reognize it for being on every namco museum even if you've never heard of it
You had to climb a 60 floors tower to get to the princess, very big for an arcade game, and what made it special is it never tells you how unlock the next stage. You had to collect a specic object but to make that appear you needed to do stuff like walking towards the outer wall of the maze, walk into a certain enemy without blocking, killing a thing..
So players had to share their findings with each other, rumors would spread and common strategies would develop, and they would even leave sticky notes on the cabinet for future knights to find!
As for the submarine simulator part, Toyama-san loves foreign games (and here I am professing my love to an eastern game, how romantic) and he really liked this port of 688 Attack Sub he imported from america
View attachment 10127
While the game looks simple he felt the mechanic of finding out where your enemy was using vague information was a lot of fun, and so in Siren you also get NO player marker, only points of interest like buildings or vehicles or shrines and YOU have to oull your pants up and get a sense of direction and carefully use your peculiar ability of looking through the monsters' eyes to figure out where they are and their walking pattern and what they do when they spot you. This makes everything a whole lot scarier because you have no guarantee you're going the right way and when you use your "Sightjack ability" you have to listen to their bone chilling moans and growls and they will Haunt Your Sleep..
On top of that you could say this is Stress: The Game as everything is on a constant timer, the monsters are tough to put down and they cannot die, they merely "sleep" for some time while all the others are constanlty patrolling, so wasting a second or getting your time wrong will lead to those thing joyfully chasing you down with their wide eyes and big laugh to carve your pretty torso with a sickle
And once you get ballsy, once you start figuring it out..you find out the thing is structured like a coin-up, its all split into simple levels that can be completed in less than 5 minutes if mastered and you can even unlock a time attack mode. It goes from dreading to take one step forward to "can I completly skip this part if I do this trick?" "What if I did this?"
Each stage is detailed and has so mnay little quirks fans have taken to compile them, the top dog being Akheon with his wonderful gamefaq guide thats practically a book (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps2/918848-siren/faqs/49715)
And yes it is RELENTHLESSLY difficult, one mistake will cost your life and to 100% it and get the final piece of the story you need to get every file, which requires exhamining unique things in each level without dying. That took me 4 months.
Since players talking to one another was its main thing and with it being released in the goldern era of the internet, it used it to its full potential
They made a fake message board where one of the playable characters was snooping around the cursed town and sharing pictures
They gave him his own spooky blog about myths and real life events (you can find the link in-game by decyphering a thing)
And random players would be sent This cursed video to promote the game, how delightful!
On top of that there's the jap only (but now fantranslated) book SIREN MANIACS
forbidden-siren.ru
Containing more stories that further expands on the story and its many misteries
This wonderful red water-soaked treasure, it was a combination of early 1980 jp arcade games the director grew up with, a random submarine game he happened to love, new face scan tecnology, amazing artists, enough money to get a rock solid engine and lots of researching real life places to recreate them, sick demos that needed motion capture and an experimental soundtrack
If it was pitched to a mainstream studio today it would've gotten instantly shut down and waterboarded with yellow paint the second they found out you're meant to get stuck and think on level 2
The planets aligned for that console I tell you, the industry was just big enough to have decent budgets (800k to 9 milion) while also not being so big everything had to be sanitized and lamed down to not scare the normies and you can never take risks. There will probably be nothing else like it even as game making becomes cheaper and easier.
This moment in history allowed for weirdo creators to do near whatever they wanted and so after co-creating Silent Hill, Keiichiro Toyama directed one of the most unque games I've ever played
Have you ever heard of a survival horror game thats inspired by a classic arcade game and a pc submarine simulator? I didnt think so
Several people happened to visit a certain village when a supernatural event occurs and now you play as them trying to escape and find out what is going on; each level is visited multiple times by all the different characters at different times and days, and to proceed you must do a specific thing as a specific character (like breaking something or examining an item) or you will get stuck in an eternal time loop.
The game is deliberately made to be impossible to finish on your own, hundreds of players have to work together and collectively bang their heads against it until it cracks as there is no indication of what in the world you're supposed to do or even what the story is aside from vague hints and brief demos (as in the jap term for cutscenes which I think sounds cooler). Most people will get stuck after a couple hours and on top of that it's crushingly difficult and opressive on top of being terrifying, I mean listen to THIS!
One of its biggest inspirations was the early namco arcade game Tower of Druaga, it's one of those games thats VERY big in Japan and nowhere else, and you may reognize it for being on every namco museum even if you've never heard of it
You had to climb a 60 floors tower to get to the princess, very big for an arcade game, and what made it special is it never tells you how unlock the next stage. You had to collect a specic object but to make that appear you needed to do stuff like walking towards the outer wall of the maze, walk into a certain enemy without blocking, killing a thing..
So players had to share their findings with each other, rumors would spread and common strategies would develop, and they would even leave sticky notes on the cabinet for future knights to find!
As for the submarine simulator part, Toyama-san loves foreign games (and here I am professing my love to an eastern game, how romantic) and he really liked this port of 688 Attack Sub he imported from america
View attachment 10127
While the game looks simple he felt the mechanic of finding out where your enemy was using vague information was a lot of fun, and so in Siren you also get NO player marker, only points of interest like buildings or vehicles or shrines and YOU have to oull your pants up and get a sense of direction and carefully use your peculiar ability of looking through the monsters' eyes to figure out where they are and their walking pattern and what they do when they spot you. This makes everything a whole lot scarier because you have no guarantee you're going the right way and when you use your "Sightjack ability" you have to listen to their bone chilling moans and growls and they will Haunt Your Sleep..
On top of that you could say this is Stress: The Game as everything is on a constant timer, the monsters are tough to put down and they cannot die, they merely "sleep" for some time while all the others are constanlty patrolling, so wasting a second or getting your time wrong will lead to those thing joyfully chasing you down with their wide eyes and big laugh to carve your pretty torso with a sickle
And once you get ballsy, once you start figuring it out..you find out the thing is structured like a coin-up, its all split into simple levels that can be completed in less than 5 minutes if mastered and you can even unlock a time attack mode. It goes from dreading to take one step forward to "can I completly skip this part if I do this trick?" "What if I did this?"
Each stage is detailed and has so mnay little quirks fans have taken to compile them, the top dog being Akheon with his wonderful gamefaq guide thats practically a book (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps2/918848-siren/faqs/49715)
And yes it is RELENTHLESSLY difficult, one mistake will cost your life and to 100% it and get the final piece of the story you need to get every file, which requires exhamining unique things in each level without dying. That took me 4 months.
Since players talking to one another was its main thing and with it being released in the goldern era of the internet, it used it to its full potential
They made a fake message board where one of the playable characters was snooping around the cursed town and sharing pictures
They gave him his own spooky blog about myths and real life events (you can find the link in-game by decyphering a thing)
And random players would be sent This cursed video to promote the game, how delightful!
SIREN Maniacs - Forbidden Siren Official Guide Book with English Translation
English Translation of "Siren Maniacs" - the official guide book about the PS2 horror game Forbidden Siren. Here you will find all information about Siren and interviews with developers.
This wonderful red water-soaked treasure, it was a combination of early 1980 jp arcade games the director grew up with, a random submarine game he happened to love, new face scan tecnology, amazing artists, enough money to get a rock solid engine and lots of researching real life places to recreate them, sick demos that needed motion capture and an experimental soundtrack
If it was pitched to a mainstream studio today it would've gotten instantly shut down and waterboarded with yellow paint the second they found out you're meant to get stuck and think on level 2
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